Longhorn Beetles Insect Print - Insectes - Plate 4, 1924

This is a beautiful pochoir print from French decorative artist Emile-Alain Seguy, who enjoyed a successful career spanning Art Nouveau to Art Deco, from 1900 through the 1930s. He produced 11 decorative folios, including the intensely colored Insectes series from 1924, totaling 20 plates portraying 80 different insects from around the world. Innovative not only for their early Art Deco design, the insect compositions are rendered with scientific accuracy.

Seguy employed the pochoir technique – a printing process that requires hand colored stencils to create remarkably deep and iridescent color. Pochoir books were popular in the 1920s, with Paris at the center of the production, paving the way for subsequent silkscreening techniques. Seguy’s Insectes were influential for many designers for their abstract compositions and electric color palette.